CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
The desire of any educational system is to produce students who are sufficiently trained to contribute meaningfully to the development of the system and the society in general. The trend in the academic achievement of primary school pupils in Kokokuma/Opokuma local government area of Bayelsa State in the last two decades has become a major source of concern to all stakeholders I the education sector. This is so because of the great importance that education has on the national development of the country. There is a consensus of opinion about the fallen standard of education in Nigeria (Adebule, 2004). Parents and government are in agreement that their huge investment on education is not yielding the desired dividend (Adegbije, 2005). This is giving great concern to educators, parents, students, school administrators and the general public.
But in this century, intelligence and success are not viewed the same way they were before (Goleman, 1995). New theories of intelligence were introduced and are gradually replacing the traditional theory. The whole child or pupils has become the centre of concern not only his reasoning capacities, but also his creativity, emotion and interpersonal skills. Apart from the traditional IQ, emotional intelligence (EI) is seen by researchers to possess the ability to fully explain performance outcomes. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotion to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). There is a connection between emotion and cognitive. Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2009) viewed emotion as one of the three fundamental classes of mental operations which include motivation, emotion and cognition. There is the notion that positive quality emotions and feelings help students to achieve and give their best potential in the classroom (Fozura and Ghazali, 2010). As such teachers should understand that any stress on the domain of the learners would affect their cognitive domain in classroom. As such teaching emotional and social skills at school is important as these skills have long term effects on achievement. Also, research n brain based learning suggests that emotional intelligence is fundamental to effective learning. Hence, Emotional intelligence is being incorporated in the school curriculum and training programmes in some organizations to achieve their objectives. According to Coleman (2010), IQ alone is no more a measure of success; it accounts for 20% and the rest (80%) goes for emotional, social intelligence and luck. These statements have attrite attention of educators and educational policy makers.
In Nigeria, not much attention has been focused on exploring emotional intelligence in the school system many teachers, educationists, schools and pupils in Nigeria have little or no idea of emotional intelligence and its effects on learning. The consideration of factors affecting success in primary schools in Nigeria often neglects the role of non-cognitive variables including emotional intelligence, hence emotional intelligence is not part of the curriculum of any subject this gap in knowledge exist in the midst of poor academic performance of pupils in the school. Academic performance is an achievement that is adjudged by the examiner as falling below an expected standard. Academic failure is not only frustrating to the pupil, and the parents, its effects are equally grave on the society in terms of death of manpower in all spheres of the economy and policy (Aremu, 2009). Morakinyo (2010) agrees that the falling level of academic achievement is attributable to teacher’s non-use of verbal reinforcement strategy. Adegbife (2011) found out the attitude of some teachers to their job is reflected in their poor attendance to lessons, lateness to school, unsavoury comments about students’ performance that could damage their ego, poor academic performance among primary school pupils is usually attributed to the school authority and teachers attitudes to their work.
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